To be honest with you, the algorithm is pretty good. I'm a pretty active user of "not interested" and "don't recommend this channel" so the algorithm generally shows me stuff I already like or things I may be interested in.

What I find frustrating is that there are so many extra UI blocks shoved in between regular videos. Featured current events, rentable movies, playable games, and the fucking shorts I don't give a shit about. Since I mainly watch on mobile I also can't just remove those sections and even when I dismiss them, YouTube decides to shove them in my face again and again.

I just want to be left alone to watch my nerdy stuff :(

That's a very astute observation and it made me wonder if piracy was partly to blame for the death of the B-tier game (at least on PC). In my younger pre-Steam days me and my friends would pirate 9/10 of the games we played (if not more). Games like CoD/Fifa/Sims would get enough sales from regular folks, but who the heck was going to take a chance on something like Will Rock or Scrapland? I would often check out games at my local store and then go home to torrent them, meaning they lost out on sales from the kinds of weirdos who the games were made for.

I agree. We can celebrate what makes the PC platform great without turning it into a competition.

Maybe you can get the same experience at a place llike AniList or Kitsu?

I've been a macOS user for over a decade and I am never going back to Windows. That being said, Apple does have iCloud (their version of OneDrive) which is tightly integrated into the OS and they're not shy about asking you to pay for more storage. They also want you to log in with an Apple ID when you first start your computer and I don't know how easy it is to use a local account.

It's not the same as Windows in terms of aggressive ads and upsells, but Apple aren't innocent in wanting more of your money. If you want true freedom you have to pay with your time and energy and run Linux.

I use this rule: accounts.google.com/gsi/* Is yours similar?

I've been a fan of Dragon Age since Origins and this game looks like another step towards the kind of simplified gameplay that every game has made. It's disappointing that the series has gone from an RPG to a generic 3rd person action adventure game, but given the gradual evolution of the other games it's not really surprising.

kind of game Bioware has forgotten how to make.

Such a nice way to sum it up. You would think that the success of Baldur's Gate 3 would show publishers that there is a (large) market for actual RPGs, but that's maybe too much to hope for.

I haven't had a gaming-capable PC for about a decade and I'm very happy with my PS5 (and the PS4 before it). Sony bringing exclusives to PC don't feel like the end times as it's just a way for them to make more money.

I'm genuinely glad that PC players will get to experience some of the great games that have been on the PS5 in the last few years.

I remember feeling liberated when streaming became big. Dealing with potential fake files, low quality, or having something stuck on 95% with no seeders was something I wasn't going to miss when I ditched piracy for Netflix.... then the streaming wars began and here I come crawling back.

I also pay for Kagi and I'm super happy with that decision. I do wish they'd stop putting so much AI cruft into their search engine, but at least I can disable it.

With all the money they'll save from shutting down all the smaller studios they can just go out and buy more.

But how else can they guarantee infinite growth to their shareholders? Won't someone please think of the poor shareholders???